These are guidelines for practices, not rules. So, what does this look like, in practice? A trained facilitator facilitates each meeting. When making a decision, we use our fingers to indicate agreement or the need for more conversation. Fingers wiggled upwards means yes; sideways means more discussion is needed; and downwards means no. We call them twinkle fingers. Facilitation starts by writing the names of every participant on a whiteboard. We add names of absentees or people who contributed to the project who might not have been involved in writing. Then, we “chunk” people based on the amount or type of labor contributed. For the paper you are reading now, these chunks included involvement in: 1) discussions; 2) editing and discussions; and 3) writing, editing, and discussions. People can move between chunks after they are added (Image 2). The longest part of our process is ordering authors within these chunks. We choose the first and last author in a section by discussing types and values of labor and by reviewing the lists of care work and social standing explained above. People step up to ask for consideration, step back if they feel they are already considered, and recommend others based on the care and labor they’ve seen them perform. This last practice is important for absent members. When two people seem completely even, there is a strong temptation to resort to alphabetical order, but that is not staying with the trouble. We go down the list of care work and social location and think of other aspects of social location and care not already on the list. This often leads to discussions of what counts as social location, privilege, and care, and thus refines our commitment to intersectional feminism. The process of determining author order in CLEAR is performative: it enacts and strengthens the values we hold dear. Recognizing past care work leads to thanking each other. Talking about what should be included in social standing hones our ideas of equity, and allows us to stand in solidarity with one another. Crucially, each iteration of determining author order is different in that we are always faced with a new set of issues to consider. Our approach to authorship order is not, and can never be, systematized. The establishment of systems closes discussion. Instead, we use a situated process that recognizes diversity and difference while at the same time rewarding the varied contributions to knowledge production, and most importantly, we become a more reflexive, stronger feminist lab every time we have these discussions.
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